I wonder if you agree that many who might deny do so as a knee-jerk reaction to a sense intimidation (or the usual guilt).

The term of the day, if you recall, was "Attitude". It was something that, hitherto, had not been broadly encouraged as exemplified by terminology such as "the weaker sex" or "the little lady".

On the button!

However, I really think that only a majority of men ever believed in the idea of a weaker sex; I have always thought that women are all perfectly aware of their immense power, and it's only a matter of how/where they are brought up that allows them to be comfortable with it or, alternatively, to let it lie unharnessed. It's sometimes easier to submit and avoid situations.

On the matter of male fear of women, the intimidation you mentioned, that's illustrated so painfully right now with that poor kid shot in the head and neck by the guys in beards and turbans. What a perversion to use God as an excuse for one's own fears of inadequacy.

Excellent set of pictures; puts me in mind of W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh adventure. It also shows how innocent rural groups appear to be and how far from the American Dream lots of lives really are. That's the same in most developed countries, of course: there are those that are at the front of the game who do very nicely, and the rest who struggle on to make ends meet, with little chance of any social mobility or even, I guess, self-help. I used to be totally conditioned to the theory of self-help, and believed that all it took in life was the will to win. Not so; living where I do, and finding myself truly stuck there unless willing to get out at a huge financial loss, I understand only too clearly what it means to be stuck in a bog. I'm lucky - so far - to be able to survive quite well; not so those with familes and no work. It's grim being poor and worse when you have heavy responsibilities beyond yourself.

It all seems so sadly familiar, somehow. The wheel of Life (Fortune?) in motion yet again.

Thanks for the Meunier link Rob. It is s public holiday here and those pics have set the tone for me to go and eat Middle Eastern again today.

I just revel in the look of that film — my only pity is that it is colour.

Cheers,

W

I eat Mallorquin today (I always do... unavoidable at 10 euros) at the old watering hole that had closed for six weeks over Christmas and reopened yesterday. The regular chef's off having cataracts dealt with; the owner's Mum was working the kitchen... maybe the regular chef needs a prolonged recuperation. Mum's pretty damned good! Enjoy your couscous.

The only shots on this site that left me (respectful, but) cold were the magazine covers/fashion shots, from which he presumably made his living. I found that puzzling, because I liked the others so much. I suppose they are fine examples of a genre that I fail to appreciate. On the other hand his "play" shots struck me as inventive and elegant.

I guess it's down to eras and what was the fashionable look of those times.

What strikes me especially is the way that the then clean cover syle has given way to things that now look much like telephone directories or corner-retailers' fly-sheets: everything crammed and cramped together as if in some desperate shout with which to arrest the casual passer-by.

I have a suspicion that it's either a reflection of falling magazine sales or, more likely, those falls are the result of poor design actually putting erstwhile subscribers off. If you open those top mags today and inspect the inner pages you'd be amazed at how cramped everything is and at the plethora of tiny images, mostly too tiny to be of any real informative value. Yes, the main fashion 'stories' are still okay as regards the space pix are allowed, but apart from the full-page ads - it's a mess of too much information. IMO, I hasten to add.

But I do feel it's all gone the way of the toilet: the impossible, cultural fantasy of more for less reigns supreme.

Revisited an old favourite, Jeanloup Sieff's site; it's been updated with some different classics since the last time I looked. For anyone interested, there's a beautiful book with eponymous title published by Taschen: ISBN 3-8228-4647-3. I love it dearly.

P.S. The main reason I looked again was because of something David Sutton mentioned about his own landscape shots with tiny figures. I remembered the book has quite a few such images, and one makes it over to the website, if not quite as tiny in the image as in some of the book shots.